Deficiencies in essential, mainly omega-3 and omega-6 (n-3, n-6) long chain
polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) result in visual and
cognitive impairment and disturbances in mental functions in animals and could be the main reason for the increasing incidence of different
mental disorders in humans. Traditional approaches cannot give us a detailed picture on how dietary
lipids exert their effects, because they focus on only a few genes or
biomarkers. Dietary
lipids not only influence the biophysical state of the cell membranes but, via direct and indirect routes, they also act on multiple pathways including signalling and gene and
protein activities. Therefore, to understand the molecular basis of the effects and roles of
n-3 PUFA in the central nervous system global screening techniques such as
DNA- or
protein microarrays were used to assess the changes, in a global way, at the transcriptome and at the
proteome level. With
DNA microarrays we found that
cholesterol and
fish oil (high in PUFA) diets altered the expression of several genes involved in raft formation and membrane protrusions. By using
protein microarrays we detected a decreased concentration of
protein kinase C beta, gamma,
phospholipase C gamma and other changes in the expression level of
proteins involved in the signal transduction pathway in the brain in response to high
cholesterol diet. Besides the known cellular effects of
lipid nutritions (changing
eicosanoid make up, effects on membrane fluidity and raft stability) it is now evident that dietary
lipids influence gene and
protein activity levels,
protein modifications and probably play important role in modulating
protein aggregation.